'Paradise' was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for outstanding drama last year.Anne Marie Fox/Disney/Supplied
Paradise, the Disney+ postapocalyptic drama starting a second season Monday, isn’t exactly the end of the world as we know it, according to its star Sterling K. Brown.
As its first season drew to a close, Brown’s secret service agent Xavier Collins had learned that the Colorado underground lair where he was living with 24,999 others after what seemed like a world-ending disaster was not in fact all that was left of humanity.
Not only were others still alive – but Teri, his wife, presumed dead for years, had sent out a radio transmission from Atlanta searching for him and their two kids.
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So far, so familiar. The one rule of bunker shows (Silo on Apple TV+; Fallout on Prime Video) is that there’s always more going on outside than protagonists originally think.
But Paradise stands apart in this: As Xavier heads out into the wider world in search of his wife this season, he does so with a deepened trust in humanity.
In an interview in a Toronto hotel room that’s had its windows blacked out bunker-style for on-camera interviews, Brown explains his character’s “big flip” – being evangelical about believing in people despite having been lied to by those in charge for years.
It comes down to Xavier having heard his wife’s voice – and knowing someone must have helped her survive.
The Globe's Kelly Nestruck interviews Sterling K. Brown, star of the post-apocalyptic political thriller Paradise, and explores how much current political events are reflected in the series.
The Globe and Mail
“He has to believe that, whatever the world is, it allowed for her to live, that the people, the climate, whatever it was, allowed for her to be,” Brown says. “And so he’s believing for the best.”
Believing for the best is not a great idea in other TV shows in this genre – from The Last of Us to The Walking Dead – where you’re as or more likely to get tortured by other survivors than gobbled up by zombies.
But the undead-free Paradise is a creation of Dan Fogelman – who was also behind This is Us, the heartfelt family NBC drama that, along with The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, transformed Brown from a working actor to one of the small screen’s biggest stars a decade ago.
Fogelman’s contribution to an outpouring of postapocalypse pop culture is similarly emotional, designed to make its audiences and actors burst into tears. (Brown, in particular, has become noted for his skills in on-camera crying.)
A tonic for pessimistic times, Paradise has higher hopes for what aspects of humanity will come to the forefront, as Brown puts it, “if and when we have to face a global catastrophe.”
“We have within us the capacity to go two ways: We can be selfish; we can be selfless,” says the 49-year-old actor, a father of two like his character.
“Fogelman, in his own way, is trying to point people toward ‘It’s better to share. It’s better to be the kind of human being that wants to see other human beings do well and not just do well for yourself.’”
Shailene Woodley plays a new character in the latest season of the show.Ser Baffo/Disney/Supplied
Paradise, nominated for a Primetime Emmy for outstanding drama last year, is not Brown’s first time figuring things out in a bunker.
In 2022, he co-starred in an American sci-fi comedy film called Biosphere, in which his character, Ray, was one of two survivors of a global catastrophe; the other was the President of the United States, played by Mark Duplass.
(Coincidentally, on Paradise, Brown’s character Xavier is also a close friend of a POTUS named Cal Bradford, played by James Marsden – which is how he ended up selected to be part of a city of survivors.)
Brown said he was drawn to these two superficially similar projects by their “very different stories.” As for audiences, are we so entranced by doomsday narratives right now because we are afraid the end of the world is coming – or because, secretly, we are eager for the world as we know it to end?
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The American actor thinks it’s a little bit of both. He cites the fearmongering that’s happening across the globe – and the divisiveness in his county in particular.
“A lot of people would like to live in a place where fear is not the first thing that they feel when they wake up and they look at the news, right? So, in that way, they would like that to end,” he says.
“I don’t think anybody is wishing for a postapocalyptic world. They’re just looking for simpler, easier times where they are able to get along with their fellow human being, and just live life.”
Watching Brown’s Xavier navigate a depopulated American landscape as a traveller, a wanderer, a refugee, and find care and kindness – and, without spoiling too much, the actor Shailene Woodley playing a new character – seems a coded response to a moment where neighbour is pitted against neighbour.
“You can address things through genre, because there’s a little bit of distance from the present. But it’s necessarily going to be reflective of the world that we live in right now,” says Brown.